Sabers and Spiders
by cthulhu-with-a-fez
Summary: A Nutcracker Ballet AU. Merry Christmas, ilarual!


so there's a few things you should probably know about this fic.

1) i haven't seen the Nutcracker in a while so I'm taking a lot of liberties with the canon here  
>2) most of this was written between midnight and 2 AM so it's likely not to be that great<br>3) please imagine Maka in the Black Dress by the end of it because i wanted to write that in there but couldn't figure out how

anyway, enjoy!

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><p>When the Christmas party was over, all the guests had left, and the household was asleep, Maka crept quietly down the stairs to the parlor. She knew she was being silly, but she couldn't help the compulsion she felt to check on her nutcracker one last time before she slept. Her way was lit by the moonbeams streaming across the floor. The cold, clear light lent an otherworldly cast to the familiar walls and furniture, and Maka walked as lightly as she could across the old wooden floor. She didn't want to wake her papa.<p>

When she reached the Christmas tree in the drawing room, however, she paused on the tips of her toes like a startled deer as she took in the otherworldly sight before her. No longer was the room bathed in the warm and ruddy glow of the fireplace as it had been earlier that night. The full moon now lit the room instead, streaming in from the tall windows with an eerie intensity. Its silvery light was almost unnaturally bright, glinting cold and mysterious off the Christmas tree and its trappings and transforming the spun-glass ornaments into something as solid as steel. The silence of the witching hour hung heavy in the air. Maka shivered at its weight, taking soft and shallow breaths, before tearing her gaze away to pad cautiously towards the glass display cabinet containing her nutcracker.

She turned the small, ornate doorknob on the front of the cabinet, and the wood-framed door swung open without a sound. She gently picked up her nutcracker from his shelf. His jaw was still loose and broken from her adoptive brother Black*Star's rough treatment earlier, the white paint of his sharp teeth chipped from the same incident, and his red eyes stared blankly back into her own. He looked exactly the same as he did when she left him in Dr. Stein's care earlier that night. She sighed, an odd mix of disappointment and relief in the small sound.

"I'm not sure what I expected," she murmured to the wooden figurine, breaking the spell of silence held by the inanimate denizens of the room.

The grandfather clock in the corner struck midnight.

Maka almost dropped her nutcracker as the first of the chimes rang out, the sound a shock on ears acclimated to the hush of the otherwise sleeping house. Turning to glance at the source of the disturbance, she saw a flash of white near the top of the clock. Her eyes trailed up the dark wooden casing to reveal her godfather perched at the top, legs crossed and elbows braced knees. His customary patchwork lab coat hung in pale folds down the sides, and his wire-rimmed glasses were opaque from reflected moonlight. He looked more like a statue than a person as the midnight chimes continued to ring.

Stein tilted his head to regard her where she stood at the bottom of the clock, glasses still flaring in the moonlight, and the corner of his mouth twitched up in a knowing half-smile when he saw how tightly she held the nutcracker doll he'd given her. He raised one hand and snapped his fingers just as the clock stopped chiming. For a moment, the room returned to such a stillness that Maka heard her quickened pulse roaring in her ears. But moments pass, as moments do, and the room began to warp and change before her very eyes. The clock stretched upwards with a groan, and the creaking of wood and tinkling of ornaments behind her told her that the tree was doing the same thing. She turned to look at it all the same, and her suspicions were confirmed as she saw her reflection in one of the lower-hanging baubles begin to shrink. The needles of the tree were soon as thick around as her arm, and the ornaments the size of her head, and the tiny candles hung on its boughs began to light themselves until the room was once again awash with the glow of their fire.

When she looked back at the clock, her godfather had vanished. Her nutcracker, however, stood before her, wooden body grown almost to Maka's own size. His clothing was no longer painted on but real fabric, the dark grey suit he wore reminiscent of a military uniform. A pin in the shape of a stylized skull was pinned to his lapel. The most glaring difference from his previous appearance, however, was the red and black saber hanging from his side, grown long and sharp and much more dangerous than the silver-painted wooden toy it had been not ten minutes previous.

When the room stopped growing, a flicker of shadow passed across her nutcracker's face. It faded as soon as it had come, and after it had left there was a new brightness in eyes that no longer looked painted. He blinked once, twice, burgundy eyes taking in their surroundings, and his fingers fanned out and clenched at his sides. He stretched, arms raised up over his head, back arched like a cat, and he let out a satisfied sigh at the motion. He turned to look at Maka when she was done, and she squeaked with slight trepidation. Toys weren't supposed to come alive… right?

"It's okay," he said quietly, extending a hand towards her. "It's not like I'm gonna hurt you. I'm still your nutcracker, yeah?"

Maka stared at the hand for a moment before taking it, fingers encountering an appendage made of wood and enamel instead of flesh. She allowed herself to be tugged a little closer to the nutcracker, and he gave her a smile made lopsided by his still-cracked jaw. She returned it with one of her own, and he blushed slightly. She suddenly became overwhelmingly aware that they were still holding hands.

She felt a prickling on the back of her neck and turned around, looking into the shadows that clung to the corners of the room for the source of the unpleasant sensation. She felt her nutcracker's hand tighten on hers; clearly, he felt it too. There was a whispery sort of sound that came from beneath the Christmas tree towering over their heads, drawing their gaze, and when the first of the spiders began to crawl from a knothole in the trunk they both recoiled in disgust. Her nutcracker took a step in front of her, drawing his saber in a clear preparation for battle. The spiders kept pouring out of the tree, one after the other, identical down to the last hair on their skittering legs, and they arrayed themselves in front of Maka and her protector as if they were soldiers in a battalion. Neither side moved a muscle when the tide of spiders finally ceased, and a moment passed in tense standoff.

The silence was broken when the knothole from which the spiders had poured twisted open wider, and wider, and wider still, until it spanned nearly half the tree's trunk in width. Silver strands of spiderweb slipped out of it like particularly horrifying silk, wrapping themselves around the low-hanging branches and attaching to the trunk until they'd woven themselves into something like a throne. And when the web strands had stopped moving, a woman walked out of the tree. The web throne lowered itself as she walked up to it, and returned to its original height after she'd sat down. Her skin was as pale as the moon, and her dark hair was caught up in a bun topped by a small silver crown. Her half-lidded eyes shone violet above a wide, ornate fan.

"Arachne," the nutcracker growled, wooden fingers clenching tightly on the hilt of his saber.

"Soul," the spider queen replied, throaty voice easily carrying across the horde of her minions. "What a nice surprise it is to see you again."

"Like hell it is," he retorted, face drawn in a snarl. "You knew I was here."

"So I did," she replied, slowly fanning herself as the spiders arrayed before them started to shift from impatience. "What do you plan to do about it?"

The nutcracker - _Soul _- let out a humorless bark of laughter. "You tell me. You're the one who brought the army, after all."

One of Arachne's perfectly sculpted eyebrows quirked up in mock-surprise. "Isn't it obvious? I couldn't just let you break my little curse so easily. In fact, I don't think I'll let you break it at all."

She snapped her fan shut and opened her eyes fully, revealing pupilless violet irises spangled with spiderwebs. She pointed her fan at Soul and Maka, and her army of spiders surged forwards without a word. Soul leapt into action, saber felling the rabble of spiders left and right. They kept pouring forth, though, their numbers seemingly endless. Maka hung back from the fray, watching her protector take bites and scratches and blows from the spiders, and wished she had something, _anything_, to fight with. She hated doing nothing, but what good would she do without a weapon?

Soul kept fighting for what seemed like hours, black and red saber flashing under the light of the candles. For every spider that he cut down, two more seemed ready and eager to rush at him in its place. His formerly pristine uniform was torn in several places, small pieces of wood splintering off where the spiders had bitten him. He was on his knees, still clutching his saber hilt, breathing heavily from the hard-fought battle. Arachne smirked.

"You may have defeated my soldiers, nutcracker, but you're exhausted. I could do anything to you, and you wouldn't be able to lift a finger to help yourself," she said, opening her fan once again.

Soul glared at her from his position on the ground, but said nothing. Maka stepped towards him from her position in the background, in an attempt at comfort or solidarity. She didn't know which. Arachne's spiderweb eyes snapped up at her motion, tracking Maka's movements as she went to stand by Soul's side.

"Don't you dare even try to touch him," Maka spat, voice steady with courage she wasn't sure she had. "He's _my _nutcracker, not yours."

"Ah, but he _is _mine, little girl. He's more mine than yours, anyway - after all, I was the one who gave him that form to begin with. And I don't appreciate you putting your filthy human hands on my property," Arachne hissed.

She snapped her fan shut once again, pointing it at Maka, and her eyes began to glow with a dangerous light. Strands of spiderwebs crackling with violet light shot out from beneath her throne. Before Maka could react or dodge the attack, Soul had thrown himself in front of it to protect her. A slash of the violet light from the spiderwebs carved a path across his chest, and he fell backwards with a grunt of pain. Maka stood in horrified silence for a moment before she saw red. She snatched Soul's saber up from where it had fallen on the ground and charged at Arachne, a thin scream issuing from her throat as she ran. The spider queen's eyes widened as she approached, clearly not expecting resistance, and before she could muster a defense Maka had swung the saber. Her head hit the floor with a weak thump, the rest of her body dissolving into dust and her web throne melting away like snow in the sun.

Maka dropped the saber with a clatter. She couldn't believe it. She had just killed the queen of the spiders with the saber of a living, wooden nutcracker, and she didn't even have a scratch on her to show for it. Soul, on the other hand…

She quickly turned to run back to her nutcracker, only to find that he wasn't so much of one any more. Gone were the blocky wooden limbs, the military uniform, and the bites and scratches and other wounds he'd incurred during the battle. In his place, still laying prone on the ground, was a human being. He wore a formal suit, now, and lacked the saber's sheath, but he was still recognizable as her nutcracker. He propped himself up on one elbow and grinned, revealing the same red eyes and pointed teeth as his previous form.

"When you killed Arachne, you broke the curse she'd put on me," he explained, responding to her overwhelmed expression. "It's _really_ nice to be human again. Thank you."

Soul delivered his last sentence with such fervor that Maka almost laughed. Instead, she extended her hand to him. He took it, this time meeting her fingers with a flesh-and-blood hand, and pulled himself upright.

"No problem," she said with a smile. He looked towards the knothole from which the spiders had come, then looked back to her. He hesitated for a moment, clearly struggling with something, before he took a deep breath and forged ahead.

"Now that Arachne's gone, I can go home through the portal in the tree. I could take you with me, if you wanted to visit it…?"

He blushed a little and looked down at his feet, shuffling back and forth as he awaited Maka's response.

"Where do you live?" she asked. "Because I don't think you mean the tree."

He grinned brightly, looking over to her as he squeezed the hand he still held.

"I live in the realm of the Christmas fairies, and on behalf of the entire realm I bid thee welcome," he said, releasing her hand to perform an elaborate bow. Maka giggled at the over-the-top gesture.

"That sounds amazing," she said, and took his hand once more as they walked towards fairyland together.


End file.
